1630 Nature poems

— We seen his mama she dry and scant By hook or by bent I guttle the rudimental stories. I’m all in-scoop suck and swallow by dint of birth. Of shape. — Were you hallow-nursed on riversource upon a time (or ‘the rocky breasts forever’) I was not. I learned to lie in want for succor-food; for forms; I lunged I gulped for what I got. Nowadays to need to come by what comes by here comes natural and needs no bait. Just steep dead-still as a blacksnake creek and wait.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell." On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail. Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see; It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee. And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow, And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe, He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess; And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request." Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan: "It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone. Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains; So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains." A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail; And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee. There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven, With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given; It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains, But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains." Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code. In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load. In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring, Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing. And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow; And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low; The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in; And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin. Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay; It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May." And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum; Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum." Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee. Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so; And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky. I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear; But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near; I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside. I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide. And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door. It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm— Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm." There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

The senseless leaf   in the fevered hand Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows Green. Weeks ago the dove’s last cooing strain Settled silent in the nest to brood slow Absence from song. The dropped leaf cools On the uncut grass, supple still, still green, Twining still these fingers as they listless pull The tangle straight until the tangle tightens And the hand is caught, another fallen leaf. The poetry of the earth never ceases Ceasing — one blade of grass denies belief Until its mere thread bears the grasshopper’s Whole weight, and the black cricket sings unseen, Desire living in a hole beneath the tangle’s green.

He falls abruptly silent when we fling A basket down or bang the dryer shut, But soon takes up again where he left off. Swept by a rainstorm through a narrow trough Clotted with cobwebs into Lord knows what Impenetrable murk, he’s undeterred— You’d think his dauntless solo was a chorus, This rusty sump, a field or forest spring. And there is something wondrous and absurd About the way he does as he is bidden By instinct, with his gift for staying hidden While making sure unseen is plainly heard. All afternoon his tremolo ascends Clear to the second story, where a girl Who also has learned blithely to ignore us Sings to herself behind her bedroom door. Maybe she moves to her invented score With a conductor’s flourish, or pretends She’s a Spanish dancer, lost in stamp and whirl And waving fan—notes floating, as she plays, Through the open window where the willow sways And shimmers, humming to another string. There is no story where the story ends. What does a singer live for but to sing?

The twilight is the morning of his day. While Sleep drops seaward from the fading shore, With purpling sail and dip of silver oar, He cheers the shadowed time with roundelay, Until the dark east softens into gray. Now as the noisy hours are coming—hark! His song dies gently—it is growing dark— His night, with its one star, is on the way! Faintly the light breaks over the blowing oats— Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir. We worship Song, and servants are of her— I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time: Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes, And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme.

For James Welch The first harvest of wheat in flatlands along the Milk startled me into thoughts of you and this place we both remember and also forget as home. Maybe it was the familiarity or maybe it was my own need to ask if you have ever regretted leaving. What bends, what gives? And have you ever missed this wind?—it has now grown warm with late summer, but soon it will be as dangerous as the bobcat stalking calves and pets just south of the river. Men take out their dogs, a case of beer and wait in their pickups for dawn, for a chance with their rifles. They don’t understand that she isn’t going to make any mistakes. With winter my need for an answer grows more desperate and there are only four roads out. One is the same cat hunters drive with mannish glory and return along, gun still oil-shined and unshot. Another goes deeper into Assiniboine territory: This is the one I should talk myself into taking next. I haven’t much traveled the third except to visit a hospital where, after the first time, my mother had refused chemotherapy. And the last road you know as well as I do— past the coral-painted Catholic church, its doors long ago sealed shut to the mouth of Mission Canyon, then south just a ways, to where the Rockies cut open and forgive. There you and I are on the ascent. After that, the arrival is what matters most.

The snail at the edge of the road inches forward, a trim gray finger of a fellow in pinstripe suit. He’s burdened by his house that has to follow where he goes.  Every inch, he pulls together all he is, all he owns, all he was given. The road is wide but he is called by something that knows him on the other side.

I saluted the famous river as I do every year Turning south as if the plough steered, Kicking, at the start of a new furrow, my back To the shady purple gardens with benches under plum trees By the river that hunts between piers and sandbanks— I began threading the long bridge, I bowed my head And lifted my hands from the wheel for an instant of trust, I faced the long rows of vines curving up the hillside Lightly like feathers, and longer than the swallow’s flight, My road already traced before me in a dance Of three nights and three days, Of sidestepping hills and crescent lights blinding me (If there was just a bar counter and ice and a glass, and a room upstairs: But it rushed past me and how many early starts before The morning when the looped passes descend to the ruined arch?) She came rising up out of the water, her eyes were like sandbanks The wrinkles in her forehead were like the flaws in the mist (maybe a long narrow boat with a man lying down and a rod and line like a frond of hair dipping in the stream) She was humming the song about the estuary, and the delights Of a salt ocean, the lighthouse like a summons; and she told me: The land will not go to that measure, it lasts, you’ll see How the earth widens and mountains are empty, only With tracks that search and dip, from here to the city of Rome Where the road gallops up to the dome as big as the sun. You will see your sister going ahead of you And she will not need to rest, but you must lie In the dry air of your hotel where the traffic grinds before dawn, The cello changing gear at the foot of the long hill, And think of the story of the suitors on horseback Getting ready to trample up the mountain of glass.

Rotting in the wet gray air the railroad depot stands deserted under still green trees. In the fields cold begins an end. There were other too-long-postponed departures. They left, finally, because of well water gone rank, the smell of fungus, the chill of rain in chimneys. The spot is abandoned even in memory. They knew, locking doors upon empty houses, to leave without regret is to lose title to one home forever.

Was it because at last I cleaned the window that he threw himself against the glass? I thought, poor crow— he doesn't know the evergreens and blue sky are behind him. I turned back to my page but whumpp — the bird attacked the glass again. His long claws scuffled at the pane and I yelled "Crow! Go away!" Again his body slapped the glass, again and then again, and then at last he caught my eye— oh, prophet, terrified.